ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
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Poets are not born but made
ALISTAIR FINDLAY recommends a collection of interviews with 15 award-winning poets discussing how their initial drafts became the finished poem
EZRA POUND: ‘Less rhetorical din’ and ‘fewer painted adjectives,’ (pictured in Venice, 1963)
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
MICK McSHANE rubs shoulders with Mod legend Steve Craddock and joins in with the joyous Glasgow choir
DENNIS BROE sifts out the ideological bias of the newest TV series offerings, and picks out what to see, and what to avoid
Voice of the Hoover: Review of The Process of Poetry
ed Rosanne McGlone
Fly on the Wall Press, £10.99
FOR budding left poets and interested readers, I recommend The Process of Poetry, a rare and relatively cheap book (£10.99). It comprises interviews with 15 award-winning poets discussing how their initial drafts became the finished poem. Both draft and final version are given, thus allowing the reader to look virtually over the shoulder of the poet through the whole process of composition.
This returned me to the 1990s and the half-dozen Arvon week-long residential writing courses I attended myself tutored by the likes of Liz Lochhead, Tom Leonard, Kathleen Jamie, Jackie Kay, Fred D’Aguiar, Brendan Kennelly, Mimi Khalvati, Brian McCabe — poet laureates, gold medal-winners et al.
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